Abstract : A new general inductive inference method has been described in which the a-priori probability of a sequence of symbols is computed on the basis of the lengths of various code strings that could be used to describe that sequence to a universal Turing machine. A coding method is displayed for a simple Bernoulli sequence and the inference technique is applied to the computation of probabilities of symbols in that sequence. The results obtained in this case are shown to be identical to Laplace's rule of succession. The probabilities correspond to Shannon's entropy if the Bernoulli sequence is a very long one. (Author)